I first watched the television series The Prisoner in my mid-20s, so about 20 years ago now. I’ve watched it several times since and in my opinion anglo television should have ended then, and not just because of its technical and artistic achievements. It should have in spite of them – the biggest achievement of all is that it perfectly demonstrated why television (and consequently all the surveillance tech that stemmed from it that the show gives a frighteningly prescient rendition of) should have been dismantled as an industry with its airing. I’m not really a television enthusiast, but like anyone else under this order, I’ve seen my share whether I like it or not (by hook or by crook). I can’t think of any other shows I’ve taken the time to watch that have left me seriously thinking about how awful the whole endeavor really is.

Maybe that’s naive and provincial of me, maybe I should watch more to get a better impression of why I shouldn’t! As much as such a contradictory statement could possibly be true, I cannot with these majorly media-covered and “acclaimed” series, don’t really want to, and in not so small part thanks to this show and the things I’ve taken away from it. I was not really raised on television and that mostly followed through into my early adulthood – I didn’t have the time for it and didn’t care. Then “prestige television” came along at a time I was insisting that television was dying and we should welcome its demise. That one didn’t turn out so well, did it. But then again I didn’t have anything to show my work, just a general feeling of unease and realizations of what it means to stay alive as the tides turned internationally into something even more grotesque.

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